“She ran away from you,” Morgan clarified.
“Women can’t commit to anything. They let their emotions control them instead of logic. Look what happened to Elliot. He loved Candace. He tried to get her help, and what did she do? She threatened to leave him rather than do what was best for her.”
The truth fell on Lance like a cartoon anvil.
Derek had killed his brother’s wife.
Morgan clearly made the connection as well. Her posture stiffened. “Candace didn’t know what was good for her.”
“Just another example of women needing caretakers.” Derek turned his head to stare at Morgan over his shoulder. “Candace was killing herself with her addiction. Elliot loved her enough to try and stop it. But beating her addiction would have been hard, and she wasn’t willing to do the work. Elliot should have put his foot down, but he didn’t. He was weak.”
“What did you do?” Morgan asked.
Derek’s lips peeled off his teeth. “I tried to make her, but Elliot had let her get away with her bad behavior for too long. It was ingrained. If I could have isolated her for a month or so, I could have turned her around.”
Silence pulsed in the night for a few seconds.
Derek shook his head. “Her addiction was out of control. I went there to save her. To save Elliot. He was unhappy.” He took a breath, anger narrowing his eyes. “But she wouldn’t let me fix her. I tried. I tried my hardest.”
“You killed her,” Lance finished.
“She fell and hit her head.” Derek spat out the words. “It was an accident.”
Lance pressed him harder. “Then why did you cover it up?”
Derek’s lips pressed into a colorless line.
“Was she dead when you sent her car over that embankment?” Lance asked.
Derek didn’t respond, but his flat gaze lifted goose bumps on Lance’s arms.
It hadn’t mattered to Derek. In his mind, she was worthless. Her life simply didn’t matter. Lance didn’t believe for one second that her death was an accident. Derek could have called for an ambulance. Instead, he chose to cover up her death.
“You failed with Chelsea,” Lance prodded.
“I can fix her.” Derek’s voice rose. “She’s sweeter. More pure of heart and soul. Not jaded and ruined by drugs.”
“She has children,” Morgan said.
“She can have more children. My children.” Derek’s face reddened. “I can make her love me. It just takes time.”
“You tortured her.” Lance wanted to find that brand and hear it sizzle in Derek’s skin. The man deserved to feel the pain he’d inflicted on Chelsea.
“I taught her,” Derek interrupted. “There’s a difference. A blend of positive and negative reinforcement to show her that being submissive to a man would make her happy.”
Lance had nothing left to say. There was no point. A man that far gone, that demented, could never be turned around.
Sirens floated on the cold air.
Now it was over.
Chapter Forty-Four
Thirty minutes later, Morgan stood in front of Chelsea and Tim’s house. She wrapped her arms around her waist. Her initial nausea after the showdown with Derek had faded. Adrenaline had deserted her, leaving her limbs shaky and weak.
Derek’s revelations had not been a complete surprise. But she was too spent to fully process what he’d told them. Lance thought his story was bullshit. Morgan didn’t know what to believe.
“Morgan!” Stella’s voice pierced the busy scene.
Morgan braced herself for her sister’s fury.
Stella weaved her way through a foursome of patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies. Both departments had responded to the 911 call.
Stopping in front of Morgan, Stella propped her hands on her hips. “What the hell were you doing?”
Morgan hugged her body against the night chill. She’d ditched Chelsea’s robe in the house so she could move faster. “What did you want me to do? Call you and tell you we had a hunch that Derek Pagano was Chelsea’s kidnapper, and we were planning to camp in their house until he showed up for her?”
“Yes!”
Morgan shook her head. “We didn’t know when or if he’d come. It could have been days from now.”
It hadn’t taken much to convince Tim and Chelsea they were at risk. Chelsea had jumped at the chance to get out of her house. The family had packed a few bags. Sharp had whisked them off to the hotel where her parents were registered and stayed to watch over them.
“You should have told me,” Stella huffed. “At least I would have had a patrol car in the area.”
“What if he didn’t come tonight? Or tomorrow night? Would the SFPD have continued to babysit us?” But Morgan had expected him to come quickly, before any evidence surfaced to make the sheriff doubt the Burns brothers had kidnapped Chelsea.
Stella glared. “I could have done it off duty.”
“So, no. The SFPD wouldn’t have babysat us for a hunch.” Though Morgan knew she probably should have called her sister.
Morgan and Lance had agreed to give her plan three nights. As it turned out, they’d needed only one.
Lance came out of the house, where he’d been walking the responding officer through the events of the evening. He held a gauze pad over the cut on his eyebrow.
Morgan reached up and lifted the corner of the gauze. “You need a couple of stitches.”
“Probably.” He shrugged.
Morgan took his arm. “I’ll drive you.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she shook her head and shot him a look. Morgan wanted to give her sister some time to cool off. She steered Lance toward the Jeep and held out her hand for the keys.
“I can drive,” he protested.
“Seriously? You’ll get blood all over your vehicle.”
He handed her the keys and cursed under his breath as he stared over her shoulder. “It’s the sheriff. Quick. Get in. We can pretend we didn’t see him.”
“Kruger! Dane!” Sheriff King’s voice boomed over all the other law enforcement activity.
Morgan turned to face King. “Can I help you, Sheriff?”
The sheriff’s face was red enough that she thought he might need to go to the ER. He led Lance and Morgan away from the other officers.
King folded his arms over his chest. “I sent a car to Derek Pagano’s address, but there was no driveway or mailbox. We found a back entrance to the property. Derek has an old cabin back in the woods. The deputy took a walk around the property looking for Derek. Behind the cabin, he found a rusty old shipping container. Someone had busted a hole right through the roof.”
“That’s where Chelsea was kept,” Morgan said.
“Forensics will have to do its thing, but I think it’s reasonable to theorize that Derek kidnapped Chelsea. I’ll be heading over there when I’m finished here. I’ll let you know what we discover.” The sheriff coughed into his fist and looked away. “Thank you for your help. If you two hadn’t been so persistent, tonight would have turned out very different for Chelsea and her family.”
“You’re welcome,” Morgan said. “Keeping the Clark family safe was our only goal. You’re going to pick up Elliot too, right? He gave his brother an alibi for the night Chelsea went missing. He also left Derek’s name off the list of Speed Net employees.”
“I already sent a deputy to his house,” the sheriff confirmed.
“Now that I think about our first visit there, we saw Derek by chance,” Morgan said. “It was their mother, Barbara, who pointed Derek out to us. If she hadn’t done that, we would never have known that Derek worked at Speed Net.”
Morgan shivered. Lance put an arm around her shoulders.
“I’ll need you both in my office tomorrow to sign formal statements.” With a nod, the sheriff backed away.
Morgan drove Lance to the hospital and walked him to the ER waiting room.
“Would you mind if I snuck upstairs to see my grandfather?” she asked.<
br />
“Or course not, but it’s one a.m. Do you think you can get in?”
“They have a twenty-four-hour visitation policy for critical patients.” She rose on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. “Later, we’ll process what happened tonight. Right now, I’m just very, very happy that we’re both in one piece, and that Chelsea, Tim, and their kids are safe.”
“Go check on Grandpa.” Lance gestured toward the four people sitting in the waiting room. “I’m going to be here for a while.”
Morgan made her way to the ICU ward. She stopped in the hallway and glanced through the doorway. A monitor beeped in a low, steady rhythm. A nurse stood next to the bed, checking the machines and recording information on a clipboard. She spotted Morgan and crossed the room to join her in the corridor.
“He’s doing really well,” the nurse said. “We’re moving him to a regular floor in the morning. And he’s awake. Go on in.”
“Thank you.” Morgan went into the room.
Grandpa opened his eyes and smiled at her. His hand slipped out from under the white blanket. His fingers curled in a beckoning gesture.
“Hey.” Morgan took his hand, her chest tightening with gratitude and relief.
“I told you I wasn’t dead yet.” Grandpa’s skin was pale, and his focus appeared fuzzy. “You need to have faith.”
“You’re right.” She squeezed his fingers. “Are you in pain?”
“A little, but don’t worry. The nurses are taking good care of me,” he said. “Did you solve your case?”
“We did.” Morgan gave him a condensed rundown of the last two days.
“Atta girl.” He gave her hand a weak shake. “I knew you’d figure it out. It’s in your genes.” His eyelids drooped.
“I have to go collect Lance in the ER.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Ian and Peyton are in town too.” His voice slurred. He’d protested calling them, but his sleepy smile said he was pleased that they’d come.
“I love you.”
“Love you more.” Grandpa’s eyes closed.
Despite Morgan’s exhaustion, her step was light as she left the room. Grandpa wasn’t getting any younger, but he was still with her. She was going to enjoy every day he was in her life and try not to worry about the future.
She returned to the ER. A nurse directed her to Lance’s ER bed, where a young doctor was finishing stitching his cut. When the wound was closed and bandaged, Lance checked out.
“It’s too late to pick up the kids,” she said.
“Stay with me the rest of the night?”
“Yes.” She wanted to spend the night with him without any major trauma.
Ignoring his complaints that he was perfectly fine, she drove back to his house. A short while later, she stripped off her clothes and climbed into his big bed.
Lance lay down next to her. He opened his arms. “Come here.”
She was too exhausted for sex, but his body was warm beside her, and she curled up against him.
“I know I didn’t love your plan,” he said. “But we did good tonight.”
“We’re a great team.” She nestled into his shoulder.
“We are.”
No matter what happened, it was easier to handle with him at her side.
Chapter Forty-Five
Monday morning dawned brightly—too brightly for someone who’d slept only a few hours. Morgan squinted through her sunglasses and clutched her extralarge coffee like a security blanket as Lance escorted her across the parking lot of the sheriff’s station.
“I owe Mac’s brother a favor or ten,” Morgan said. Grant Barrett had volunteered to drive the girls to school and drop Gianna at dialysis that morning. “I’m not sure how I’ll ever repay them.”
“I doubt he’s looking for repayment. Mac said they just wanted your kids to be safe.”
“Well, I’m eternally grateful.”
Everyone in the sheriff’s department looked ragged. The deep bags under Sheriff King’s eyes said he’d been up all night, but he’d shaved and his clothes were fresh.
She probably didn’t look much better.
“Come this way.” Sheriff King waved Morgan and Lance into a conference room. “Elliot Pagano was here most of the night. He gave a full confession. Do you want to watch his interview?”
“Yes.” Morgan concealed her surprise at the offer.
A monitor had been set up on the table. The sheriff sat down in front of it and typed on the keyboard. He gestured to the chairs opposite him, and Morgan and Lance sat.
The sheriff turned the monitor to face them. A picture on the screen appeared to be the same room. Sitting at the table, Elliot Pagano looked like he’d aged ten years in a few days. He waived his right to an attorney. His eyes looked lost. Beaten.
Almost dead.
On the video, the sheriff sat across from Elliot. Another officer sat to his left. The fourth man, who sat next to Elliot, had “lawyer” written all over him from his Hermès tie to his David Yurman cuff links.
“We know your brother kidnapped Chelsea Clark and that he killed your wife,” the sheriff said.
Elliot folded his hands on the table. “He did it for me.”
“Why?” the sheriff asked.
Elliot lifted a shoulder in the careless gesture of a man who doesn’t have anything else to lose. “She was leaving me. I wanted her to go into treatment for her drug addiction. We fought. She wanted a divorce. I made the mistake of telling Derek. She contributed a portion of the start-up capital. If she divorced me, she might have been entitled to half of Speed Net.”
“Derek couldn’t let that happen,” the sheriff said.
“He didn’t intend to kill her.” Without meeting the sheriff’s gaze, Elliot shook his head. “It was an accident.”
“Was it?”
“Yes!” Elliot’s eyes snapped to the sheriff’s for a moment. “She fell and hit her head.”
“So Derek put her in her car and sent it over a cliff. Did you help him?”
“She was already dead; it hardly mattered. Why should he go to prison over an accident?”
“If it was an accident, why cover it up?”
Elliot stared down at his hands in silence.
The sheriff leaned closer. “Are you sure she was dead when he put her in that car?”
“Derek wouldn’t lie to me.” Elliot’s voice was flat, lifeless. “We’re family.”
“He killed your wife.”
“No!” But Elliot’s voice broke, as if the night had shaken his trust in his brother, and he couldn’t bear it. “Derek wanted to help Candace. She was self-destructing. He thought he could break her addiction, but she wouldn’t cooperate. They fought. She fell and hit her head. That’s what happened.” His eyes drifted. He wasn’t talking to the sheriff anymore, but to himself. As if trying to convince himself that his brother’s story was true.
The sheriff changed tack. “Did you know he took Chelsea?”
“Not at first. He confessed to me the next morning.” Elliot looked away. “I encouraged him to let her go, but he couldn’t. He loved her.”
A muscle in the sheriff’s jaw twitched. “He kidnapped and beat her.”
Elliot let out a breath. “He wanted a woman who would never leave him. He hadn’t had any luck finding one, so he decided to make his own.”
“Did you help him?” the sheriff asked. “He needed to drop a car at the train station. He got to Chelsea’s house somehow.”
Elliot shook his head. “Derek used his bike to get to Chelsea’s house. He hid it in the woods and retrieved it later. He took the bike with him to Grey’s Hollow. He left his car there and rode his bike back. Twenty miles is nothing for him. Some of his road races are over a hundred.”
“How did he know Chelsea would be going out that night?”
“Early Friday morning, I asked Tim if he could work late. He said no, that his wife had plans. Derek overheard.” Elliot’s absence of emotion
lifted goose bumps on Morgan’s arms.
“He’s so . . . flat,” she said.
The sheriff reached forward and turned off the monitor. “No trace of remorse.”
“No trace of humanity,” Lance said.
Morgan rubbed her biceps. “The only thing he seems to care about is believing what his brother told him.”
“Maybe he needs to believe that Derek didn’t murder Candace,” Lance added.
“I hope they don’t try for an insanity defense. Derek’s body is covered with scars, including a brand on his leg that matches Chelsea’s and cuts on his arms and legs that look self-inflicted.” The sheriff rubbed the back of his neck. “Their parents seem pretty normal. They refuse to even consider the idea their sons committed any crimes, but they did verify that the two men have always been extremely close. Derek wasn’t a good student. Elliot got him through school. On the other hand, Elliot was scraggly as a kid and got beat up a lot. Derek always came to his defense. Mr. Pagano told a story about Derek beating up a neighborhood bully who tormented Elliot. Mr. Pagano tried to make light of the incident, but apparently, Derek pushed the kid off an overpass. He broke both his legs. There’s no official record, but I’ll bet if we dig in to their childhood enough, we’ll find some teachers who remember more disturbing incidents involving the Pagano brothers.”
“They both likely suffer from some kind of psychopathy,” Morgan said. “But to be criminally insane, they have to be unable to determine right from wrong. Elliot and Derek are too cold and calculating. They took steps to prevent Derek from being caught. They clearly knew what he was doing was wrong. They just didn’t care about anyone but themselves.”
“Let’s hope the judge and jury agree with you.” The sheriff sat back.
“What are they charging Elliot with?” Morgan asked.
“Everything the DA can think of.” Anger flared in the sheriff’s eyes. “That bastard knew where Chelsea was on Saturday. He could have gotten her rescued. Instead, he let his brother torture her for nearly a week—”
The sheriff paused, visibly getting himself under control. “The ME pulled Candace Pagano’s autopsy report. That embankment she went over is steep. The car rolled all the way down to the bottom. Without a seat belt to hold her in place, she bounced around enough that the initial head trauma was covered up by the crash. Derek got lucky when the car caught fire. Her purse, containing a bottle of illegal OxyContin, was flung from the vehicle, and the autopsy showed the drug in her bloodstream. She took it every day. I don’t know if he’ll be able to find any proof that she was dead or alive when she was put in that car, but we have a confession. And forensics is having a party over at Derek’s place. In the workshop where he fixes his bike, they found a metal infinity symbol that matches the brand on Chelsea Clark. The storage container looked exactly like she described, and her fingerprints and Derek’s were all over the unit. Also, he repaired his road bike in his shed. The oil he uses on his bike has a funky smell. Chelsea recognized the odor immediately.”
Her Last Goodbye (Morgan Dane Book 2) Page 31